Vertical Prose

From: "he must have been named damian" <cookthief@hotmail.com To: cookthief@hotmail.com Subject: the rumi stuff once sent to robert Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:46:52 GMT MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Originating-IP: [4.54.137.172] Received: from 4.54.137.172 by lw4fd.law4.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP;Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:46:52 GMT SOMETIMES I FORGET COMPLETELY Sometimes I forget completely what companionship is. Unconscious and insane, I spill sad energy everywhere. My story gets told in various ways: a romance, a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy. Divide up my forgetfulness to any number, it will go around. These dark suggestions that I follow, are they part of some plan? Friends, be careful. Don't come near me out of curiosity, or sympathy. TALKING IN THE NIGHT In the middle of the night, I cried out, "Who lives in this love I have?" You said, "I do, but I'm not here alone. Why are these other images with me?" I said, "They are reflections of you, just as the beautiful inhabitants of Chigil in Turkestan resemble eachother." You said, "But who is this other *living* being?" "That is my wounded soul." Then I brought that soul to you as a prisoner. "This one is dangerous," I said. "Don't let him off easy." You winked and gave me one end of a delicate thread. "Pull it tight, but don't break it." I reached my hand to touch you. You struck it down. "Why are you so harsh with me?" "For good reason. But certainly not to keep you away! Whoever enters this place saying *Here I am* must be slapped. This is not a pen for sheep. There are no seperating distances here. This is love's sanctuary. Saladin is how the soul looks. Rub your eyes, and look again with love at love." TWO FRIENDS A certain person came to the Friend's door and knocked. "Who's there?" "It's me." The Friend answered, "Go away. There's no place for raw meat at this table." The individual went wandering for a year. Nothing but the fire of seperation can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned completely cooked, walked up and down in front of the Friend's house, gently knocked. "Who is it?" "You." "Please come in, my self, there's no place in this house for two. The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through the eye of the needle. It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end, not a big ego-blast with baggage." But how can a camel be thinned to a thread? With the shears of practices, with *doing* things. And with help from the one who brings impossibilities to pass, who quiets willfulness, who gives sight to one blind from birth. *Every day that one does something.* Take that as your text. Every day God sends forth three powerful energies: One, from the sperm of the father into the mother, so growth may begin. Two, a birth from the womb of the ground, so male and female may spring into existance. Three, there's a surge up from the surface into what is beyond dying, that the real beauty of creating can be recognized. There's no way to ever say this. Let's return to the two friends whose thread became single, who spell with their two letters the original word, *BE.* B and E tighten around subjects and objects that one now may hold them. Two scissor blades make one cut. And watch two men washing clothes. One makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. They seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there's really only one work. Someone listening to a millstone falls asleep. No matter. The stone keeps turning. Water from a mountain far above the mill keeps flowing down. The sleepers will get their bread. Underground it moves, without sound, and without repetition. Show us where that source of speech is that has no alphabet. That spaciousness. Where we are now is a narrow fantasy that comes from there, and the actual, outside world is even narrower. Narrowness is pain, and the cause of narrowness is manyness. Creation was spoken with one sound, BE. The two letters, B and E, to record it, came after. The meaning of the sound and its resonance are one. There's no way to ever say this, in so may words! And no place to stop saying it. Meanwhile, a lion and a wolf were fighting. . . . THE BLOCKED ROAD I wish I knew what you wanted. You block the road and won't give me rest. You pull my lead-rope one way, then the other. You act cold, my darling! Do you hear what I say? Will this night of talking ever end? Why am I still embarrassed and timid about you? You are thousands. You are one. Quiet, but most articulate. Your name is Spring. Your name is wine. Your name is the nausea that comes from wine! You are my doubting and the lightpoints in my eyes. You are every image, and yet I'm homesick for you. Can I get there? Where the deer pounces on the lion, where the one I'm after's after me? This drum and these words keep pounding! Let them both smash through their coverings into silence. TALKING THROUGH THE DOOR You said, "Who's at the door?" I said, "Your slave." You said," What do you want?" "To see you and bow." "How long will you wait?" "Until you call." "How long will you cook?" "Til the Resurrection." We talked through the door. I claimed a great love and that I had given up what the world gives to be in that love. You said, "Such claims require a witness." I said,"This longing, these tears." You said,"Discredited witnesses." I said, "Surely not!" You said, "Who did you come with?" "The majesstic imagination you gave me." "*Why* did you come"? "The musk of your wine was in the air." "What is your intention?" "Friendship." "What do you want from me?" "Grace." Then you asked, "Where have you been most comfortable?" "In the palace." "What did you see there?" "Amazing things." "Then why is it so desolate?" "Because all that can be taken away in a second." "Who can do that?" "This clear discernment." "Where can you live safely then?" "In surrender." "What is this giving up?" "A peace that saves us." "Is there no threat of disaster?" "Only what comes in your street, inside your love." "How do you walk there?" "In perfection." Now silence. If I told more of this conversation, those listening would leave themselves. There would be no door, no roof or window either! BONFIRE AT MIDNIGHT A shout comes out from my room where I've been cooped up. After all my lust and dead living I can still live with you. You want me to. You fix and bring me food. You forget the way I've been. The ocean moves and surges in the heat of the middle of the day, in the heat of this thought I'm having Why aren't all human resistances burning up with this thought? It's a drum and arms waving. It's a bonfire at midnight on the top edge of a hill, this meeting again with you. CONSTANT CONVERSATION Who is luckiest in this whole orhcestra? The reed. Its mouth touches your lips to learn music. All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only of this chance. They sway in the canebrakes, free in the many ways they dance. Without you the instruments would die. One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss. The tambourine begs, *Touch my skin so I can be myself.* Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone, that what died last night can be whole today. Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out? I won't do it. Either give me enough wine or leave me alone, now that I know how it is to be with you in a constant conversation. * Friend, our closeness is this: anywhere you put your foot, feel me in the firmness under you. How is it with this love, I see your world and not you? * BUOYANCY Love has taken away my practices and filled me with poetry. I tried to keep quietly repeating, *No strength but yours,* but I couldn't. I had to clap and sing. I used to be respectable and chaste and stable, but who can stand in this strong wind and remember those things? A mountain keeps an echo deep inside iteself. That's how I hold your voice. I am scrap wood thrown into your fire, and quickly reduced to smoke. I saw you and became empty. This emptiness, more beautiful than existance, it obliterates existance, and yet when it comes, existance thrives and creates more existance! The sky is blue. The world is a blind man squatting on the road. But whoever sees your emptiness sees beyond the blue and beyond the blind man. A great soul like Muhammad, or Jesus, moving through a crowd in a city where no one knows him. To praise is to praise how one surrenders to the emptiness. To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes. Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship. So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where! Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck we could have. It's a total waking up! Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping? It doesn't matter how long we've been unconcious. We're groggy, but let the guilt go. Feel the motions of tenderness around you, the buoyancy. ["some forget it is just as cool to be awake as it is to be asleep"] ["the dead can, indeed, dance"]